Midnight In Madrid

FORTY-FOUR

OUTSIDE MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 1:47 P.M.

By noon they had come to their first destination, the austere gray palace of Escorial, built more than four centuries earlier by King Felipe II. Unlike many of the great palaces of Europe, this one had its macabre touch. The inner courtyard had been conceived as a contemplative retreat and as a mausoleum. It had served as a final resting place for the revered Carlos I of Spain, Felipe’s father, who had also been the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

They took the official tour, which lasted less than an hour, and then spent another hour exploring the architecture by themselves. The gigantic building, with its almost three thousand windows, was situated on the slopes of the Guardarrama mountains. From its top floors, it offered a view in every direction of what had once been the Spanish Empire, from Italy to the south, to the Netherlands to the north, and to the Americas in the west.

Walking these grounds put Alex in touch with centuries of Spanish civilization. Peter, always wishing to add to his knowledge of Western culture, observed critically and with great interest, asking questions of the guides when necessary.

They paused for a late lunch at a café in the nearby town of Santa Cruz, after which Alex glanced at her watch. “We still have time for the Valley of the Fallen,” she said. “It’s more modern. I have a feeling I’ll relate to it better. Still game?”

“Still game,” he said. “What is it, this place where we’re going?”

Moments later, they stood by the roadside outside the restaurant. Alex scanned the horizon and found what she was looking for. A white stone cross stood many stories high on a peak ten miles in the distance. “See that?” she asked. “That’s where we’re going.”

They slid back into the car and she took out a map. They drove southward for another half hour on a winding highway that passed by bulls, those reared for bullfights, grazing in green fields. Then the road abruptly rose into a hot, foggy mountain. The road led into Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen, where Franco’s most megalomaniacal monument had been built.

During the 1950s in this place, thousands of prison laborers, many of them who had been prisoners of war from the Civil War, tunneled hundreds of yards into a granite mountain ridge to build one of the world’s biggest and most sinister basilicas. The church was now part of a Spanish Civil War memorial. It stood beneath a cross nearly fifty stories high, a cross that on a clear day can be seen from scores of miles in every direction.

The site had expressed Franco’s desire for national atonement in the 1950s when Spain made her first shaky steps of returning to the world community. Franco’s rule, as Franco himself liked to see it, was not a victory of the Falange, the Spanish version of fascism, but of a traditional Catholic conservative Spain. Franco, on his crusade to save Christian civilization in his homeland, had modeled himself after monarchs like Philip II. To Alex, the site brought to mind the architecture of the Third Reich.

Alex and Peter Chang solemnly walked the grounds of the basilica and the giant cross. The day was brutally hot. In this place, the remains of murdered Republicans were unearthed from mass graves and trucked to the valley to be mixed with dead Nationalists, so it could be designated a place for all Civil War victims.

Here also was the tomb of Franco and the founder of the Falange Party, Franco’s onetime rival, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, son of the dictator of the 1920s. The site culminated at the high altar with the graves of those two men. As Alex and Peter stood before it in silence, they noticed several fresh bouquets of flowers laid on each tombstone. A young Spanish family meandered glumly through silence, gazing up at the glowering statues of soldiers and saints. On the plaza outside, there was a view toward Madrid. Above their heads, a series of dark rain clouds moved in and the top of the giant cross disappeared within the sky.

“Okay,” Alex finally said around five in the afternoon. “I’ve had enough for one day.”

“Me too,” Peter said.

A few minutes later, they were back on the road. Several kilometers into the return trip, Alex spoke again.

“Something occurred to me late this afternoon, Peter,” Alex said. She spoke over the efficient hum of the air-conditioning in the Jaguar.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“We’re looking for this Pietà of Malta, or looking for the reasons someone stole it. I was thinking about how we started referring to it as the ‘black bird.’ Like in the movie.”

“Yes,” he said. “So?”

“Well,” Alex continued, “it occurs to me that, in the movie, everyone’s chasing the bird all over the place. But in the end, the bird they’re looking for is a fake. It doesn’t exist. Or at least the real one never appears.”

Chang frowned. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.

“Maybe The Pietà of Malta isn’t really out there,” she said.

“Oh, it’s out there,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Three people dead in Switzerland. Another two in Madrid. And that’s just what we know about.”

“You’ve actually seen it?” she pressed.

“I know that it exists,” he said.

“But have you actually seen it?” she asked.

“I’m certain that it exists,” he said. “It’s out there somewhere. The black bird. The Pietà of Malta. Whatever you want to call it. More than likely right under our noses. That’s what happens with stolen art.”

“What happens with stolen art is that it never gets recovered,” she said.

“This case is going to be different.” For a moment he drove silently, obviously thinking. “Well, okay, there’s another theory too,” he said. “No one will ever find The Pietà of Malta. Or at least not in our lifetimes. You know as well as I do that sometimes stolen art disappears forever. And you know what else? Sometimes the thieves get scared. They fail to move it, and they don’t want to get caught with it. So they destroy it.”

Alex folded her arms and gave the impression, accurately, of being ill at ease with his explanations and the direction of their dialogue.

“We have no choice but to move forward,” he continued. “Even if we don’t find the pietà, it’s our task to follow the trail of money. What conspiracies were put in motion by this? That’s our mission, not a little chunk of plaster from eighteen centuries ago. My job is to roll up the network of people who harmed one of my peers. Your job is to protect your country in case the theft is somehow financing an operation against America. Am I correct?”

“True enough,” she said.

“And now I’ll offer you something that you will like,” he said. “It’s an offer, not an obligation. So you’re free to decline it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Two of my peers have arrived in Madrid from China,” he said. “I’m joining them for dinner. Will you come along and meet them?”

“Where would we be meeting?” Alex asked.

“I know a little tavern,” he said. “It’s very Spanish. A little touristy maybe, but not far from your hotel. There’s nice food and good drinks. Late in the evening they have live music.”

“Who are your peers?” she asked.

“They work with me. They’re friends as well as coworkers.”

“From China?”

“Yes. From Shanghai. I think you’ll like them.”

“What line of work exactly?” she asked.

He smiled. “Same as you and me. Dirty stuff for our respective governments.”

“Ah,” she answered. She thought about it. “All right,” she said. “I’m interested.”

“What time do you have to leave tomorrow for Geneva?” he asked.

“Evening,” she said. “Late. I’m taking an overnight train. What about you? Are you flying or driving?” she asked.

“I’m going to fly.”

“I envy you. How do you move your gun from country to country?”

“I don’t,” he said. “I stash it here and get another one in Switzerland.”

“Of course,” she said. “I might have known.”

She watched the roadside sail by. There was a light rain falling now, and Peter was doing about eighty. She might have objected but didn’t. He seemed completely in control.

“Here’s the drill in Geneva,” she finally explained. “I check in at the Grand Hotel de Roubaix. I don’t know where it is, but I’ll find it on the map. The next day I’ll go to a café on the rue Sevé. It’s called Chez Ascender. It’s run by a Hungarian who’s a friend of Federov’s. That’s where I’ll ask for Koller. You know the rest of the drill because I told you.”

“Yes. I understand it,” he said.

“My guess is that you should try to meet me in the hotel bar. Let’s say six p.m. the second day I’m there. Keep an eye open over your shoulder and I’ll do the same. We don’t want to advertise that we’re together.”

“Okay,” he said steadily. “That makes sense.”

“This dinner tonight with your friends. What time?”

“Ten p.m. The place is called Tavern de Carmencita. The staff of your hotel will know it. Or should I pick you up?”

“I’ll walk,” she said. “And I’ll be intrigued to meet your peers.”

“They’re more than peers. They’re friends.”

“I’ll meet them anyway.”

“They will have women with them,” Peter warned.

“So?”

“Hired women.”

She laughed. So did he. “Expensively hired?” she asked.

“Without a doubt. My government pays very well.”

“Then I wouldn’t want to miss it.”